


Any Failing Empire

by benelelax



Category: Twin Peaks
Genre: Gen, Missing Scene, Twin Peaks: The Return
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-07-10
Updated: 2020-07-10
Packaged: 2021-03-05 04:47:14
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,223
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25188919
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/benelelax/pseuds/benelelax
Summary: He pulled off on an exit. There was a gas station nestled there in the dark, the overhang an island of light in the endless darkness of fields and smaller backroads that lay beyond the interstate. No houses in sight.
Relationships: Dale Cooper & Laura Palmer
Kudos: 6





	Any Failing Empire

**Author's Note:**

> Set during the drive from Odessa to Twin Peaks at the end of part 18. Better fic writers than me have written on this topic... but conceptually I cannot resist describing gas stations in excruciating detail so here is my rendition.

“We need to stop for gas soon,” said the agent. It was the first thing he’d said in a while, but Carrie didn’t mind all that much. The sounds of the highway made it hard to hold conversations, anyway. The sun had sunk down the horizon to silence between them. 

The dull roar of sounds faded as he pulled off on an exit. There was a gas station nestled there in the dark, the overhang an island of light in the endless darkness of fields and smaller backroads that lay beyond the interstate. No houses in sight. Carrie was sure she’d seen that kind of darkness before, but couldn’t remember it feeling so close. Like something alive. The agent pulled the car up to the pump and there was dull silence for a long moment. 

“What’s your name, anyway?” Carrie asked. He hadn't mentioned it when he'd been standing in her doorway. He looked surprised by the question, as though he didn’t think it was important information. Still, it was a reaction Carrie preferred to anger. 

“Dale Cooper,” he answered, after a pause long enough to be awkward. 

“Do you always have so much trouble with names?” she was trying for levity, hiding her curiosity over who _Laura_ was under her tone in a way she’d perfected over the years. He didn’t answer, just stared forward to the place in front of them where the lot ended and tall, unkempt grass faded into murk. 

He climbed out of the car a moment later. She listened to the muted sound of the fuel cap opening and the pump being arranged before she climbed out of the car, too. 

“Are you hungry?” She asked. She tapped fingers on the roof of the car. The buzz of fluorescent lights, the hum of the ice machine up against the wall of the convenience store, the _wooshing_ from the distant interstate. Cooper wasn’t much of a talker. The sounds seemed to vibrate right through him, and it set Carrie into a fuzzy, fidgety kind of restlessness. 

“A little,” he finally answered. He pulled the pump out of the car, and leaned back to peer at the number above the pump. It was a ‘3.’ He set off for the doors to the convenience store, she followed.

Inside, a white-haired, stout man stood behind the counter, who stood straight and unmoving even though there was no one else in the store. His eyes were sharp, tracking their path through the door in a way that wasn’t quite ordinary. Carrie was glad not to be alone. Cooper was a stranger, too, but his eyes lacked that unnerving sharpness. She took another appraising look at the stout little man, though she kept Cooper between her and him. The inspection left her quite certain of the difference between the two men. 

With Cooper busying himself paying for their tank of gas, she crossed to a counter on the other side of the space where stacks of Styrofoam cups towered next to a silver coffee maker. She filled up two of the cups, full enough that a little splashed out on the counter each time. The coffee wouldn’t be very good, she knew, and to that end grabbed fistfuls of sugar and creamer packets, shoving them into her pockets.

Returning to the counter, she set the coffee cups in front of the white-haired man. She could see Cooper give her a sidelong glance. 

“You said you were hungry, didn’t you?” Carrie hadn’t said _exactly_ that, but she’d meant it, so she nodded. Together, they went to look at the shelves, leaving the coffee cups near the register.

While Cooper lingered at the end of one aisle, apparently having having changed his mind about being hungry, she looked at the selection intently. None of it was very appealing, but she still looked through each shelf methodically before making any choice. 

Eventually, she picked out a plastic-wrapped turkey sandwich, and with a backward glance at Cooper, who still had made no move to even look at the food, picked up a bag of pistachios as well. She hadn’t any idea if he ate pistachios, but they seemed neutral enough, and she could always eat them herself if he didn’t. 

They returned to the front counter, and he took a card back out to pay for the food and the coffee. Carrie watched closely as he swiped the card through the reader in a hesitant motion-- the name on the card was not ‘Dale Cooper.’ The white-haired cashier handed off the receipt without saying anything. 

A doorbell tone broke into the quiet as they opened the door to leave, Carrie exhaled once they passed by the front windows and out of sight of those sharp eyes. Cooper carried the two coffee cups in a cardboard cup holder, and Carrie put the pistachios under one arm to free her hands to pull at the plastic on her sandwich. 

“How long ‘til we get to this house?” she asked. Even on the uneven pavement of the parking lot, their shoes clicked a resonant, clean rhythm. Carrie tried to focus instead on the sound the plastic made as she pulled it off of the sandwich. The car seemed farther away than before. 

“Your parents’ house,” he said, his tone suggesting a correction. “About 15 more hours.”

“Laura Palmer’s house,” she ventured. He looked pleased at the observation, which bugged her just a little. “But I’m not Laura Palmer,” she reminded him. They’d both reached the car, and came to a stop. She looked up from fiddling with the plastic wrap, and was surprised to see the sad way he was looking at her. 

“I know you’re not,” he said, and the softness in his eyes was very noticeable. A melancholy kind of thing, with the same substance as the muffling sound of driving she’d been listening to all day. She felt an affection for him, because he seemed to mean what he said. It was nice when people did, and nicer still when strange men did. 

“Well,” she said, letting the matter pass for the moment. “You can’t drive on all night. And I don’t know the way. We should stop somewhere.” His brow furrowed, like he wanted to disagree and insist on driving through the night. He looked out at the darkness again, and his face resolved into agreement. 

“We could stop.” 

“As clean as we can get, for as cheap as we can get, right?” she suggested, smiling a thin little smile. He returned it weakly, like maybe she wasn’t alone in her confusion. She wasn’t sure how she felt about that. Leaving Odessa had pulled a weight off of her shoulders, even if she felt the pangs of never seeing any of it again. Cooper didn’t seem confident he was taking her somewhere better, but he at least seemed to feel the same pangs of melancholy. Like he’d recently left a lot of things, too. They both felt the weight of their destination heavily. 

Carrie opened the car door and slid back into the passenger seat. Cooper closed the driver side door, sealing off the sound from outside. She put the bag of pistachios down on the center console, and craned her neck to try and spot a sign for a motel further along the exit.

**Author's Note:**

> By the time they get to Twin Peaks I feel like Carrie cuts Cooper a lot of slack about things, and has a lot of patience with him. She obviously hasn't had a background conducive to being a 'trusting' person, so this seems like an interesting color to their relationship. Btw yes the title is from a fob song.


End file.
